I recently volunteered to be a guinea pig for science. The fact that it got me a very cool piece of swag didn’t hurt, but I honestly did it for my fellow Canadians (and only a little bit for the personal gain).

We Canadians are far too often on the receiving end of Uncle Sam’s red-hot anal stick, delivered by way of the USPS. What costs $2 to ship across those United States will often cost us $30 or more, just because we happen to be on the other side of an invisible line. Over the years, I estimate that I’ve spent hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars for the privilege of boosting the American economy, lining the already-fat pockets of UPS and USPS.

Last week, I (gently; it’s broken) put my foot down.

Nerd Merit Badges released their 7th badge, and I wanted it. I think the idea of having merit badges for being a nerd is awesome and hilarious, and I already have the others – clearly I needed to get the new one to add to my sash. I added the item to my cart and clicked the checkout button for my total: $15.94

That doesn’t sound so bad – except the badge is $3.99, and the remaining $11.95 was for shipping a 1.5″ embroidered circle to Canada.

Oh HELLS no.

I whined on Twitter used social media to share my displeasure, and was quickly contacted by the man behind the nerd badges. We got to talking via email, and he asked for suggestions on how to get the goods to Canada for a price that won’t make people cry. Since the badges are small, I suggested just sending them in an envelope – the $0.88 shipping cost would be much easier to swallow than the fancy and largely unnecessary International Air Small Package Handled by Virgin Unicorns by the Light of a Full Moon postage rate. It was all for science, see – if the badge made it to Canada in one piece and was unmolested by customs on either side of the border, John would be able to offer cheaper shipping for Canadians who want to show off their nerd pride.

The experiment was a smashing success. $0.88 and 5 days later, I had the newest Nerd Merit Badge in my slightly clammy fist and did a victory jig in our lobby. Hooray! Hooray for SCIENCE!

By way of thanks, John asked that I take a picture of myself with the badges doing something “unutterably Canadian”. I spent most of last night nude, so a picture of ME was out – but I could easily do the rest:

true north strong and free

Here’s to you, John – your willingness to make your (awesome) products more accessible to Canadians is something that every merchant should aspire to!

I should totally get a lab coat.

I don’t claim to be the smartest person you’ll ever meet, but sometimes I do things that are so bafflingly stupid that I honestly think I might be a danger to myself, if not others.

Yesterday, I had one of those moments.

Whether you’ve noticed it or not, Vancouver is gearing up for the 2010 Winter Olympics. We are T-10 days, and the entire city is abuzz with activity and intrigue. Security is at an unheard-of high – with the installation of 1,000 closed circuit cameras around the city, we are completely safe from everything except each other. Big Brother is likely watching you RIGHT NOW, so you should probably be on your best behaviour and don’t do anything to call attention to yourself.

Like, for example, accidentally leave a suspicious electronic device on public transit.

I made a post yesterday about being arrested, but as the Ministry of Love (miniluv!) hasn’t yet broken down my door, I may be safe.

What did I do? Well, at one point, I had several of these:

I bought them from ThinkGeek for Halloween, and they did the trick – creepy noises were made, and everything was hilarious and great. I kept one at the office well past October, mostly because I had forgotten about it. It started to die at some point, and it was then I discovered that it couldn’t be turned off – creepy noises were going to be made at random, and there was little I could do about it. Eventually, other people at work heard noises that shouldn’t be there, and asked that I deal with it – so I took it off my desk and made plans to bring it home.

It lived in my pocket for another few weeks, until yesterday. I found it in my pocket on the long ride into work, and spent much of the trip fiddling with it. I remember setting it on the window sill, using the magnet on the back to keep it from falling out of reach – and that’s it. The bus pulled up to my stop, and I hopped off to make my way to work.

Not really a big deal – I left a small mystery device on the bus in the middle of the biggest event this city has seen in many, many years when security is frighteningly high and watching us all with suspicious eyes, taser in hand.

What’s the worst that could happen?

No one has approached me yet to haul me off to Room 101, so I might be in the clear. It wasn’t intentional, just a stupid mistake – but what a thing to mistake, and what a time to do it. Take my advice, kids – don’t play with random electronic things, and if you do, try not to leave them in a public place in the middle of the Olympics.

That would just be stupid.

(please don’t tell on me)

There is no part of being stuck on a bus for an hour that is not awesome.

Except for all of it.

I am filled with trepidation and urine – the Olympics don’t start for another 10 days, and it’s already getting crazy in the core. I woke up early on purpose and took a bus that would have gotten me to work with plenty of time to spare – except the bus was late, the traffic was ridiculous, and things broke and caused a conga line in Gastown. I’ve been waiting for the weather to make up its mind one way or another so I can scoot, but I’m starting to think that this won’t be as foolproof a plan as I had hoped. Maybe I’ll just try to look crazy. Everyone always avoids the crazy person.

While I’m not doing anything for the Olympics in any sort of official manner, I WILL be blogging throughout the event. I’m accredited as a “Social Reporter”, which is not as fancy (but much more fun) as it sounds – but I get to make a badge and pretend I’m media, so that will be fun. Also, I’m one of the few people who can deliver Olympic observations with the sheer irrelevance they deserve, so clearly you should stick around.

I haven’t decided if I’m getting excited about the event yet, but I DID take the 12th off of work. I’m planning on just .. hanging out. I want to see what goes on downtown. The opening ceremonies don’t start until 5pm, but I imagine a whole lot of people will be arriving on that day. If the weather cooperates, I’m planning on scooting around town and watching the fun.  Maybe I’ll get arrested! I’ve been trying awfully hard, but The Law hasn’t caught up to me yet!

*ahem* I don’t really care about sports, but maybe this will be worth watching after all.

No, really. Thursday through Saturday was exciting, what with the corpses and button making and all, but Sunday was really nothing to write about: Ed and I did some errands, I napped and dyed my hair (not at the same time; that would be messy) and then I played some video games. A dull Sunday, but a relatively productive one. There’s salmon in the fridge for tonight’s dinner, for example, and we are fully stocked with a startling variety of cheese for this Saturday’s house warming party.

I have been informed that I must wear white next Monday to attend a top-secret-no-cameras-allowed-I-probably-won’t-be-allowed-to-write-about-it-but-I’m-gonna-anyway Olympic Event. This is an issue – I don’t own very many white things, and those I do own are predictably inappropriate. I’ll have to improvise something, but what? And why do we have to be all sanitized, anyway? The email gives an intriguing “you’ll understand why when you arrive”, so I am afire with curiosity and herpes. I’ll play along, just to see what the deal is. I can abide by the rules for at least that long.

Oh, that reminds me – I might be getting arrested later today. If I don’t update tomorrow, please send me some bail money.

I NEED A BUTTON MAKER.

The fruits of yesterday’s fun:

squeee!

the dictionary definitions of "delicious" and "juice"

fun with patterns!

SO MUCH FUN! Heather and I blazed through the 200 we ordered, and would have kept going if we hadn’t run out of supplies. I love buttons, and want to make more. I am so saving up for a button maker of my very own!

I probably should have asked this BEFORE I made dozens of buttons, but is there any interest in a Delicious Juice Dot Com button set? I could make some available, the proceeds of which go towards getting a button maker that I don’t have to rent. I have so many grandiose ideas, only some of which involve pictures of Ed’s wang. BUTTONS! BUTTONS FOR EVERYONE!

Anyway, if you’d be interested in djdcb, let me know below. If there’s enough of you, I’ll make it all official somehow. It’ll involve pipe cleaners.

BUTTONS!

.. was a LAMP.

The smell continued all Friday and Saturday. By Saturday evening, we were pissed off – what the hell could cause a stink of that magnitude, but be undetectable outside our apartment? Was it the laundry? The cats? The carpet? We started moving furniture and smelling every single thing in the room. Nothing made sense. The smell started Thursday night, and the only thing we did was hang a lamp.

Could it be the lamp?

It was the fucking lamp.

Ed took it down, and gave it a whiff – oh look, that smells like rotting fish corpse. How odd! The lamp hung above my desk in North Van, and never caused a problem – but when it was plugged in here, something shorted and the plastic casing started to burn. And for some reason, the burning smelled like death. We took the lamp apart and immediately disposed of all the smelly pieces, and our home is airing out. I’m glad we figured it out, but who the hell knew that lamps could do that? Certainly not me.

IT SMELLS OF EVIL

Well, our neighbours are dead.

This isn’t a threat – in all honesty, I’m about as dangerous as a paper bag – I just think that the people who live one up and over from us are dead and starting to decompose.

Last night there was a smell. It didn’t bother me too much, but Ed seems to smell like my mother (not like that, think the other way) and freaked out about the stink. After a while, I could smell it too – it was a fishy stench quite unlike the “someone’s cooking” smell you get sometimes. Also, it was after 11 at night. Our bedroom smelled like rotting fish, and the smell was getting stronger by the minute. Ed tried to cover it up with incense and Febreze, thinking someone was just cooking a late night snack – but the smell didn’t go away, and soon overtook the anti-stink measures we put in place.

Ed is now “that guy”. As much as we give our neighbours cute nicknames, I am certain that others must do it too – and now Ed will be known as that weird guy who knocked on everyone’s door just before midnight to ask if they could smell that smell. On the plus side, he got a tour of our next door neighbour’s suite (they installed bidets!) and met some of the other people in our building. Unfortunately, he’s now the weird guy on the 3rd floor AND he never found the source of the smell.

We thought it started to fade, but I think we just got used to it and eventually we turned in (after Ed drove me fucking insane with his non-stop sniffing and complaining and searching and worrying and talking when all I wanted to do was read in peace). When we woke up this morning, everything seemed fine – no smell. Maybe it was a one time thing?

Except it wasn’t! The fishy smell came roaring back, even stronger than before. We had to do the unthinkable – ask the Troll to come into our suite and ask if she could smell it. I knew Ed wasn’t crazy and smelling phantom stinks, but maybe we were both oversensitive to it? The Troll came in (we laid out a trail of children to lead her into the stink zone), and she verified that she could also smell it and it was gross. Okay, then. It wasn’t just us.

We talked a bit about where the smell could be coming from, wondering about the upstairs people. It was then that she told us the people above the suite next door weren’t actually there – they moved in in October, then left for Hong Kong at the beginning of December and haven’t been seen since.

Okay, the spooky italics were for my own amusement, but WHAT IF:

• What if they never went to HK at all?
• What if a terrible accident and/or murder occurred upstairs?
• What if they’ve been rotting all this time and the decomposition has reached a point where it’s starting to leak into the suites below?
• WHAT IF THEY’RE DEAD AND OOZING CORPSE JUICE INTO MY BEDROOM??

That’s totally what happened, isn’t it: they’re dead, and it smells very bad.

It’s easy to dismiss me and think “Oh, that Kimli. She’s so crazy! Always overreacting to easily-explained things!”, but I keep thinking about the LAST time it smelled really, really bad in our apartment:

A masturbating hobo was found in our crawl space.

So, yeah. I’m a little paranoid when it comes to outrageously bad smells that have no easy answer.

This kind of stuff seems to happen to me an awful lot.

I don’t go to Starbucks very often, but when I do, I really enjoy my grande non-fat no-water no-foam 5-pump Chai.

I’m sorry.

I feel like an asshole every time I order it, even though it’s not THAT complicated and I’m always polite. Today I got a Red Velvet cupcake to go with it! I feel so very fancy (and soon, full of sugar) and like I should be wearing yoga pants and carrying a small dog in my purse.

I’m Canadian through and through – I feel terrible when I think I might be inconveniencing someone. For example, I have to give some feedback on Etsy and I want to make my displeasure known: I ordered an item on 12/21, and the seller wordlessly shipped it on 01/20 even after I had attempted inquiries. I finally had to dispute via Paypal, and the seller still didn’t say a word or answer any of my questions. The thing arrived today and it’s cute and all, but the lack of communication and the fact that she waited a MONTH before shipping my order makes me less than positive about the transaction. So, I should leave feedback as neutral or even negative – but I don’t want to. What if it makes them feel bad?? I don’t want to make someone feel bad, but I also don’t want to lie! There’s also the issue of retaliation – once I gave someone a neutral rating with my reason (same issue, didn’t ship order until 5 weeks later) and she responded by giving me NEGATIVE feedback (with no reason, so I hope it just makes her look stupid). It made me feel bad. I don’t like it!

Seriously, I spend a lot of time worrying about stuff like this. It gives me a headache. Also giving me a headache: drama. I don’t have time for drama, and I am so not interested in it. Can’t we all just get along? Passive aggressiveness is so 1994.

I think that tonight I should not have to cook dinner.

Hey, my Formspring isn’t getting any love. Surely you want to know my remaining secrets! Ask them here!